


Le Comte d'Barbarie

by melannen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Christianity, Convent Husbands, Epistolary, Gen, Madeleine Era, guinea pigs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 11:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1426117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/pseuds/melannen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The news from M-sur-M, where all the men are mysterious, all the women are virtuous (especially the ones who aren't) and all the domesticated rodents have complicated inner lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Le Comte d'Barbarie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sophia_sol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophia_sol/gifts).



Sister Simplice of the Lazarists did not, as a rule, write or recieve frivolous letters. She was too aware of the temptation: that an hour's correspondence in the evening could so easily become two, and then become staying up by candlelight, neglecting her prayers, and nodding off over the next morning's work.

She made one exception, though she justified it as a duty to God and not a frivolity, and perhaps she did not lie even to herself in it: this was writing to the sister of the Bishop of D----, one Baptistine Myriel, who had been her dear companion in devotion when Simplice worked at the hospital in D----, and who had entreated her to write often when she went north to open the new infirmary at the factory in M-sur-M.

This is what she wrote:

M-sur-M, March 16, 1820.  
MY DEAR BAPTISTINE:

When last you wrote to me, you asked for something cheerful, to lighten the darkness that has been descending of late upon all of you at D----. Perhaps you would do better to ask cheerfulness of someone who has more practice in the art, but I shall attempt it, to the best of my ability.

Here is something: Father Madeleine has taken to carrying a guinea-pig with him in his coat-pocket. He calls it Le Comte d'Barbarie. Sister Perpetue asked him if that was perhaps not too grand a name for such a small and humble creature, but he said he bought it from a small Savoyard who found that his marmot disliked it, and the Savoyard gave it the name. Perpetue asked him if he could not change its name, but he said that surely, having become accustomed to being a Comte, it would answer to no other name.

At this, old Father Fauchelevent asked him if it answered to Comte either, and he smiled and asked if Fauchelevent would like to hold it, and set it loose on the man's bed.

I had heard about guinea-pigs, but had never seen one before. It is a small creature, though it looks perhaps smaller than it is, held in Father Madeleine's strong peasant's hands. It gave me a very queer feeling - perhaps it was wonder - to see that small scrap of life, cradled so trustingly in hands that near-engulfed it, fingers stained with ink and resin and with the scars of a man who still works every day with his hands.

Its fur is a bright ginger-color brindled with black, that breaks cheekily into a grand swirl between its ears. When Father Madeleine released it, it ran about the covers quite vivaciously, exploring all the folds of the blanket and making a squeaking noise rather like a particularly charming piglet. It has neither the manners of a barbarian nor of a comte either, but I suppose between the two, I have known names more ill-suited. Father Madeleine and the invalid occupied themselves some little time in running it around the bed, until it decided to relieve itself by the man's foot, and I had to absent myself to dispose of the result.

When I returned to the room, Sister Perpetue was asking Father Madeleine, in that scolding way she has, why he would choose to carry such a dirty, useless creature about with him. He told her that he bought it from the Savoyard because he read in one of his books that the scent of a guinea-pig keeps away rats, and he thought this might be useful. He is a great one for things he has read in his books.

I was rather concerned by this, and asked him if he thought we might get rats in the infirmary. I still remember my first posting, where we had to stay up all night and keep them out of the patients' beds with rocks and frying-pans as weapons. It seems unlikely, as Father Madeleine's building is as clean and trim as any I have known, and he grants us any improvements we should ask for. He told me not to worry, as he thinks it rather more likely that any rats in the area would start with his quarters.

Surely he cannot keep his rooms so much worse than ours, no matter how much he chooses to deprive himself of luxury. I have never seen his rooms, of course! Though there are rumors about them, as with everything about Father Madeleine. 

"Rats in your rooms, or following you about the streets at night?" asked Fauchelevent.

Father Madeleine only smiled, and he returned the animal to his pocket and gave us his farewells.

"There is your honest man," Fauchelevent said to me as he left, gazing after Father Madeleine. I am not sure what he meant, saying that.

I have not told you about Fauchelevent before, I think. He is the newest patient in our little infirmary. He was a carter in the town, and a week ago there was an accident with the horse and cart, and he was injured, and would likely have died if Father Madeleine had not risked his own life in lifting the cart off of him. I was not there, but the whole town has been speaking of nothing else, and I cannot help but uncharitably wonder if there is some untruthfulness attaching to the accounts as they spread, as is so often the case. Father Madeleine himself has said nothing of it to me; nor has Father Fauchelevent, and so certainly I shall not spread the gossip any farther. Perhaps he has taken to carrying the guinea pig simply to give the town something more interesting to say about him!

Father Fauchelevent had been one of Father Madeleine's few confirmed opponents in the town, such an any successful man will have. There was no malice in it, I think, simply the uncomprehending dislike of a man who sees another man more successful than he, and does not know why. It is so easy to build on one's own ill feelings, and forget that the other party is also just a man with his own feelings as well, particularly when it is a man like Father Madeleine, who has always seemed a man apart. And it is not only that he is not social, but that he is a man it is easy to look up to, and, perhaps, not so difficult to look down on, if one has a reason; but to try to look straight at him as an equal or a friend, one has to look away; there is something there that it is hurts one's eyes to gaze on so directly. Father Fauchelevent, having been given his life, cannot look down on him any longer, and now, I think, he does not quite know where to look. When Father Madeleine comes to speak to him, as he has done several times this week (though this was the first time accompanied by a guinea-pig), the old carter alternates between staring at him fervently and looking away.

When he had him taken to the infirmary, Madeleine sent along a thousand-franc note and a letter stating that he had bought the man's horse and cart. This would have been an over-generous sum even if the cart had not been broken and the horse had not been dead! It is difficult for one to know what to do with such generosity, especially if, like Father Fauchelevent, one has been accustomed to having a man's pride in himself.

I have been worried about Father Fauchelevent. In a small infirmary such as ours, it is so easy to come to care about each of the patients. He will live, I think, and walk again, but his knee will never bear weight easily again. Even if he were to spend that thousand francs on a new horse and cart, I do not think he could return to his old occupation. And it is always very hard, I think, to lose one's occupation, especially for those, like Fauchelevent, who have no family or anything else besides the work; it is facing the end of everything that one's life has been. I have seen it also in people who have made their families their work, and in losing a husband or a child, who was the good work the Lord gave them, they see no more reason for their own life; sometimes, I think, they find it easier to die as well, then to reshape all that they have been.

And, here! I speak of death, when you had asked for cheer. Father Fauchelevent, at least, I do not think will go that way. He has seen death already, in his captivity under the cart, and he has that peculiar look about him that many people have when they are close to death - I think you know it at least as well as I. It is as if he has grown transparent, like his life was a great glass window that was suddenly washed clean, and through it he can see God.

I asked him what he thought he might do, when he left our care, and he said to me, "Sister, I have been a peasant, a lawyer, a clerk, and a carter, and all that time I have tried to be greater than I was, or resented that I was not so great as I thought I should be. Now I have been given my life again, in grace and goodness, and now, I think, rather than strive to be great, I shall try to learn to be good. Or, at least, as good as I can be - my mother never held out many hopes in that line." He sat himself up, straighter. "And as for how I shall earn my bread, I have my wits, still, and some of my strength; the rest I leave in God's hands, for I don't suppose it matters. Or, perhaps, Father Madeleine's hands."

I could not help but think of the guinea-pig cradled in those hands, that small life embraced by such great strength, the same way I gave my small life to God's hands with my vocation, the way we are all of us held in His loving hands. But, then, Father Madeleine's hands are not God's; you have not met him, Baptistine, so you will not understand how it is sometimes a temptation to forget this - so I reminded Father Fauchelevent.

"Then will you grant me Madeleine as God's messenger, at least?" Fauchelevent asked me with a smile. This, I could not, in honesty, deny.

There is a great bravery in this man, I think. It reminds me of your brother's bravery of priests - the bravery of the tranquil. Let us all strive, then, too have the bravery to leave our doors unlatched as he does, so that there is a place for God's will to enter into our lives. Or, at least, His messengers.

Knowing that you, and Mme. Magloire, and most especially your dear Brother are in my prayers always,  
Your Sister in the Love of Christ,  
SIMPLICE


End file.
